


Can't Outrun Ourselves

by Alphawulf



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Based off of a comic I saw on tumblr, Depression, Gen, I'll tag other things as I think of them, Insomnia, Nightmares, Sad, Self-Harm, its not gonna have a sad ending either though, like its rly sad and shit, my poor children, they're just dealing with some shit and it's gonna take a lot of time for them to get through it all, this ain't gonna have a happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-01 10:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5202026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alphawulf/pseuds/Alphawulf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thought this was <em>done</em>. Apparently not. Her breathing hitches as she breathes in, and she gets an urge. She tries to squash it, she really does, idly scratching at her arms through her pajama sleeves, but ultimately she fails, just like before. Just like all the other times.</p><p>She’s pretty good at failing, at fucking up, making bad decisions. It’s kind of her forte.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. X Pxakbpp Orkp Qeolrde Ebo

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post:  
> http://sailorleo.tumblr.com/post/130008006025/the-future-aka-these-kids-are-going-to-be-messed
> 
> It made me have a lot of feelings and I couldn't stop myself from adding on to it.
> 
> Takes place before the comic, but will catch up to it eventually.

She isn’t ok.

She hasn’t been ok for quite a while, actually. About two and a half years of ‘not ok’ if you wanna get a little more specific, but hey, who’s counting?

All that really matters is that she’s not ok _right now_. Hasn’t been since about lunch. There was no major trigger to send her spiraling back down, but then again, there rarely is. There’s just usually...a slow realization of _wow I’m actually not doing well_.

This is where she finds herself at 2 or so in the morning. Laying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, breathing a bit too fast, muscles a bit too tense, mind a bit too wild.

Not ok.

She hasn’t been this bad in _months_ , not since she and Dipper went to a therapist and later got prescribed meds. They talked through the horrors they’ve been through, although the therapist didn’t seem to quite follow. How could she? She wasn’t there. She didn’t see what they saw, go through what they went through. They’d seen some fucked up shit, and they’ve been a little fucked up too, ever since.

But she thought this was _done_. Apparently not. Her breathing hitches as she breathes in, and she gets an urge. She tries to squash it, she really does, idly scratching at her arms through her pajama sleeves, but ultimately she fails, just like before. Just like all the other times.

She’s pretty good at failing, at fucking up, making bad decisions. It’s kind of her forte.

She doesn’t quite realize she stood up until she’s at the door to her room, opening it slowly, listening for the sounds of her family. A light shines from beneath her twin’s door, leaving an odd stripe across the floor and onto the wall. He’s up, then, like usual. Luckily, the stairs down are down the other way, towards her parents room. She can just make out the sounds of her dad snoring, and counts that as evidence enough that she can sneak by undetected.

Sticking to the sides of the hall, in case the floor decides to develop a creak tonight, she sneaks past their room. When she reaches the stairs, she lets out a little sigh, realizing she was holding her breath. Her breathing continues to not fall back into its usual rhythm.

Once downstairs, she walks with purpose, stepping on tiptoe across the wood floor to minimize squeaking and thumping. She soon spies what she came for - the brand new pair of scissors, sitting on a counter, waiting to be used. Almost begging.

She snatches them quickly, as if someone will catch her in that moment, then quickly makes her way back upstairs, to the bathroom she and Dipper share.

She locks herself in, just to make sure, before she starts rummaging around in her stuff under the counters. She pulls out a screwdriver, and begins to take the scissors apart. She really should have taken the old scissors, they’re less likely to be missed, but those have been through so much, probably not even that sharp anymore, and who knows what’s all on the blades?

Infections aren’t subtle, and she’s all about subtle.

The half of the scissors she wasn’t holding onto clatters to the ground once the screw is loose enough, and she freezes, breath held, listening for any sounds of walking.

She hears none, and continues.

One half of the scissors go below the sink, behind an array of pads and other feminine products, along with the screw and screwdriver. They bump into a few other screws she forgot were back there, but don’t make too much noise.

She glances up at herself in the mirror for a moment, and she catches herself scowling before she turns away, going to sit on the lidded toilet.

She doesn’t remember when she rolled up her sleeves either, but they are, up to her elbows, and she idly traces the faded white lines that decorate her arms, practically invisible unless you knew what you were looking for.

The handle of the scissors is in her right hand, and she’s squeezing it tightly, enjoying the pressure, the slight sting where she’s holding it too hard.

Then she takes a steadying breath, and begins.

At first she takes it slow, adjusting herself to the sharpness of her utensil, the weight of it. The cuts aren’t deep or wide, but they do start to tint an angry red after a few heartbeats.

It takes about five tries before she’s found the right balance of pressure and speed, and that’s when she gets to work.

Soon her left forearm has almost a dozen, nearly parallel lines running up along it, but the sting isn’t enough. She crosses over each of them, and the stinging sensation grows, especially where the lines intersect.

She closes her eyes and _breathes_ , a deep, soothing breath, focusing on the pain to drive out whatever else is trying to occupy her mind. But it’s not enough. She switches hands, and although her left arm isn’t as coordinated, soon enough her right arm looks like her left, many angry red lines crisscrossing every which way across the skin, some bleeding, some not.

One in particular, closer to her right elbow than her wrist, has started to drip, blood rolling along her arm, and she grabs some toilet paper before she can bleed on something important, or noticeable.

The stinging is intense now, humming through her, and it numbs her mind slightly.

She slowly gets up, catching her reflection once more. Eesh, maybe she should try to cover some of these?

Grabbing a bit more toilet paper, she holds it under a running sink for a few seconds before taking the damp paper and running it over her arms. The stinging intensifies, almost unbearable, and it sends shivers down her spine. Perfect.

She puts all the reddened toilet paper in the toilet and digs around under the sink once more, this time emerging with a box full of colorful bandaids. The cuts are too large for them all to be covered completely, but she at least puts some on where they cross, and a couple extras on a few of the worse cuts.

She’s aware that she looks ridiculous, when she sees herself in the mirror out of the corner of her eye, like a rainbow threw up on her arms, but then again, who’s gonna see? She’ll just wear a sweater for a while. That’s nothing new, it’s just who Mabel is, right?

Or at least, it’s who Mabel was. And no one even knows the difference between those two statements, only Dipper, cause they’re close, and share their problems with each other.

Although, she has a feeling this is something she won’t share. She doesn’t deserve that kind of comfort. He doesn’t deserve that kind of painful knowledge.

She can still be ok, on the outside, to other people, even if she really isn’t.

She’s more ok now, she thinks as she hides the other scissor half and flushes the toilet. Maybe not close to a normal person’s standard of ‘ok’, but in her life, right now, she’s not _not_ ok.

She’s just numb. And that’s ok. 


	2. Xka Qeolrde Efj, Xp Tbii

After she hides everything suspicious away, she heads back to her room. Her arms still sting, some unhappy with the bandaids, others getting irritated by her pajama sleeves rubbing against them.

She starts shaking once she’s back in her room, small involuntary shivers that make her arms twitch randomly. The biggest stuffed animal she owns is lifted from its perch on one of her chairs and taken to the bed. Once under the covers, she curls up into a ball around the animal, hugging it close and ignoring the way her arms protest with pain, and she’s not really aware that she’s crying until a tear attempts to roll over her nose, following gravity.

She presses her face into the stuffed toy and, eventually, falls asleep.

The next day she’s, well, not _ok_ but definitely much better than she was most of the day previous. She wakes up to her alarm without a trace of sadness, without much of a trace of any feeling really, and sits up, stretching.

The animal fell to the floor overnight, and she almost doesn’t bother picking it up, but a pang of guilt shoots through her and she hastily grabs it, placing it gently back onto the chair she got it from. It tries to tip over, a bit top heavy, but she catches it with all the care she didn’t have during the night, repositioning it so it’s stable.

She hears the faucet from down the hall. Dipper’s awake then. Or, at least out of his room. She wonders if he got any sleep last night. Probably not as much as she did, she thinks as she finally clicks off her alarm, eyes blearily registering that it’s 6:48, just after her first alarm. Her second’s at 7:00, and she always snoozes the first, actually wakes up to the second.

She tries to not think about that as she exits her room, heading to the bathroom too. She’s rubbing the little eye crusts away when she opens the bathroom door, seeing her brother brushing his teeth. She just steps up to the unoccupied sink when her conscious thought catches up with her.

“Brushing your teeth already bro?” She asks, plucking up her bottle of Prozac and getting one out. Did she even take one yesterday? She can’t seem to remember. She starts to fill up a cup in the sink.

He makes a sound in affirmation and she frowns slightly. No breakfast for Dipdop today? She wonders if he’s feeling ok. Well, she’s probably not gonna have breakfast either, with a vague feeling like it wouldn’t settle well, her lack of emotions numbing her hunger, making her stomach feel out of place.

When she turns off the faucet, she catches sight of some of her work, the cuts on the back of her hand ringed red, covered slightly with a pink bandaid. She lets her pajama sleeve fall over her hand, before Dipper can see.

After she quickly downs her meds and chases them with water, she too starts to brush her teeth. She can see him giving her a look in the mirror, silently wondering why she isn’t going to eat breakfast either.

Neither wants to broach the subject, so they don’t.

He gets done brushing his teeth first, obviously, and he exits the bathroom with a small salute-like wave in her direction. She copies the motion, but his back is already turned by the time she does.

When he closes the door she glances over, checking his meds. The compartment is his day-to-day container for today, thursday, is open and empty. Good. She hates having to remind him, it just feels weird. She sends a quick glance to the door before locking it.

Hurriedly finishing her brushing, her fingers idle near the end of her sleeve. They’re pulled up, and she just looks at her handiwork. She almost thought it was a dream, but of course it’s not.

A frown tugs at the corner of her mouth before she forces herself to look away and continue with her morning rituals.

 

School goes fine, she thinks, decked out in one of her bright purple sweaters, the one with a cute little bear on the front.

The only bad part was gym. Of course she forgot about gym today. Team sports, aka running around until everything inch of her skin stinks of sweat and she can’t feel her legs.

And now she’s gotta wear this sweater, along with all of that.

Today’s sport is partner kickball, also called matball. She and Dipper partner up, of course. One team is scattered about the gym, some in small groups talking, while the other is in a line, paired up, waiting to kick.

The field is big, nearly the size of the gym, and the bases are just large squishy mats laid out in a vague rectangle shape.

She can _feel_ his eyes on her, questioning why she didn’t change into her gym clothes like usual.

He doesn’t say anything though, so she feels like she may be imagining that.

When it’s their turn to bat, she volunteers right away, and he gets ready to run to first base as soon as she kicks.

The ball goes to the left, skidding along the ground, and people scramble to pick it up. They’re already on the base by the time the other team successfully picked up the ball.

She’s panting, tugging at the collar of her sweater as inconspicuously as possible, regretting so many things about her life.

It’s only been 5 minutes. She doesn’t quite know how she’ll last.

 

She somehow made it to the end of class, and luckily that’s their last class of the day.  She doesn’t think she could handle going to any other class that sweaty.

 

She calls dibs on the shower when the car pull into the driveway, and makes her way up quickly. After grabbing a change of clothes and entering the bathroom, her sweater is the first to go, once she’s locked in, and she can’t help but stare at herself.

Her hair is stringy and wet from sweat, tanktop obviously damp too, but her eyes keep wandering back to her arms. Some bandaids are starting to fall off. Others are missing altogether. She worries about where they could be, if anyone saw her shedding bandaids like a molting bird.

She shakes her head, trying to focus on getting the shower done and not worrying her dear brother with how long she’s in the bathroom. She knows he worries too much already.

After stripping off her clothing and adding it to the sweater on the floor, she removes the last of the bandaids and hides them under miscellaneous items in the trashcan.

The water makes her arms flare with pain again, but she forces them under the stream, relishing in the pain. It’s why they’re there in the first place, isn’t it?

 

By the end of the shower, the waters warm, really warm. Probably too warm, if the fuzzy numb feeling of her hands under the stream is any indication, but she doesn’t stop. It feels so...real. Grounding.

 

The mirrors fogged to hell, she notes as she turns off the water and exits the shower, drying off quickly, reapplying some bandaids to the cuts that have started leaking a little blood again.

Once she’s all ready, she retreats back to her room, until dinner, where she notices Dipper pushing his food around the plate before he excuses himself, clearing the food from his plate. Their parents keep chatting amiably, unaware to their son’s lack of appetite, and she barely keeps herself from frowning.

She guesses she’s just glad they noticed this shit earlier before it got too bad, had them go to therapy, keep them on meds.

They just don’t seem to notice the little things that the twins pick up on.

 

As she tries to sleep that night, convincing herself she _doesn’t_ need to go and add to her arms, she hears a small thump, the wall next to her bed shaking just a little. Dipper?

She’s up instantly, kneeling on her bed, ear pressed against the wall, listening for...something. Anything. Sounds of sleeping, walking, shifting around. Just any sounds.

She thinks she can hear him talking, but it’s hard to tell.

Until he lets out a small cry, a small _shhk_ of his covers as he rolls about in his bed.

She flops back down on her bed. She should do something, a small part of her is saying, go wake him up and comfort him.

Most of her is pretty numb or kind of anxious, and she doesn’t know if she could stop herself from making a detour to the bathroom if she leaves the room, so she just curls up, hugging her knees to herself, and tries to sleep, tries to ignore her brother in the midst of a nightmare, screaming at something that can’t get him, that he’s safe from.

She wished he knew that, probably just as much as he wished she’d stop blaming herself for ending the world.


	3. Yrq Qebv Xob Qebob Clo Bxze Lqebo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically a fanfic version of the comic I linked to in chapter one. I recommend reading the comic if you haven't already.

She slept through her first alarm, somehow, perhaps snoozing it while only slightly conscious of doing so. The second gets her, though, and she sluggishly rolls out of bed and walks to the bathroom.

Dipper is there before her, again, but only just, it seems. He’s just picked up his toothbrush.

She scrubs at her face as she grabs her own, applying more toothpaste than necessary. The room is oddly silent, and she can’t tell if that’s a blessing or not. She feels vaguely uncomfortable, but who knows if that’s how Dipper is interpreting the lack of communication.

Once her teeth are clean, she picks up the her pill bottle...or, is it his?

“Hey Dipshit, my brain hasn’t turned on yet. These your meds or mine?” She squints hard at the label, trying to find either of their names on it.

“Definitely yours. Mine are in one of those daily counter things, remember?"

“Oh yeah. Memorable Mabel strikes again!” She smiles in his direction, and catches his face in the mirror. He looks...just so tired. The bags under his eyes are worse than ever. She feels her smile drop.

“You having dreams about Bill again?” She asks after a few beats of silence. “You didn’t eat dinner last night, and I heard you yelling in your sleep. Mom and Dad didn’t notice, but I did."

“What about you? Are _you_ doing ok?” He’s looking at her now, eyes wider than they were, as if they too are asking, searching for any sign to the contrary.

He’s avoiding the question, she mentally notes.

“You’re derailing.” She is too, though, avoiding the question and derailing, she thinks as she puts her hands on her hips, turning towards her brother.

“I am! But I’m also worried about my sister, whom I love.” His left arm is extended out slightly, right hand on his chest.

She turns back to the sink, busying herself with filling a cup with water, keeping herself collected. There’s no way he knows, right?

“Alright, Sherlock, what makes _you_ worry about _me_?”

“Well, there’s a pair of scissors missing from downstairs, and you wouldn’t take off your sweater in gym yesterday.” She’s silent, somewhat shocked, relieved, upset that he figured it out so quickly.

The cup is almost full, so she turns off the water. The hand that does so shows off some of its cuts and bandaids. She stares at them for a few seconds before holding the cup close to herself.

“You know what happened wasn’t your fault, right?” She didn’t expect him to keep talking, and it startles her a bit.

“About as well as you ‘know’ Bill isn’t going to hurt you again.” She replies, voice somber.

“A regular bastion of knowledge, us two.” He says before taking his meds.

“Ha! Here’s to being fucked up!” She raises her glass into the air before she, too, takes her meds and chases them with water.

When she sets her cup back down, his face is a little scrunched up, and she doesn’t want to interrupt whatever internal dialogue he has going on. She starts to leave.

But before she does, hand on the doorknob, she watches as he draws on the mirror, a triangle with a single eye inside.

He then flips it off, and she lets out a small _pff_.

“Yeah, that’ll teach him.” She says before heading back to her room.

 

 

They’re closer that day of school than they have been these past few months. The classes they share, they sit just a bit closer, make faces at each other across the room when they can’t be.

It’s...extremely relieving. Her heart still pound when she thinks about he _knows_. Sure, he’s known in the past, but he knows it’s started up again, and that kind of makes her want to hide in sweater town.

But she knows about his struggles, too, and she knows how much he needs the support, how much she needs it too.

During lunch she casually brings up how she found _the best_ site to binge the entirety of Pokemon.

And that’s why, after school, she and Dipper build a blanket fort in her room, with a nest of blankets and pillows and stuffed animals, gather bowls of popcorn and candy and multiple cans of pop, and lay down to start watching Pokemon from the first season.

 

 

About 3:20 or so in the morning Mabel realizes Dipper has fallen asleep, head against her arm, and she smiles, a small yet genuine smile, before she closes her laptop and lays her head down, falling asleep as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, this fic is just a bunch of random drabbles about sad twins (if you hadn't noticed), but I don't really have many ideas myself, so if you want to leave a comment with an idea it may help spark my creativity to write more, feel free to do so! I'm always down for hearing other peoples ideas about this topic.


End file.
